Phoenix
by Wofl
Summary: Continuation of the Sampire verse. Sequal to Balance. Dean breaks and Sam's not sorry. Mature for content. Wincest. Vampire!Winchesters. aaaaaangst, and a twisted sort of schmoop. sortof.


Becoming a vampire is harder than it looks. Which, considering how painful it looks, says something about how much of a bitch it is. Sam watches his brother stumble through the stages. Pain, anger, despair. The conflicting emotions of _evil, wrong, bad,_ warring with the new instincts being shoved forcefully in his brain.

Sam knows, Sam remembers. He watches Dean with a mute sort of pity fringing at the edges of impatient anticipation. Soon, now. A few more hours, perhaps. That last bit will slip away from his brother. He'll breathe out one last time and it'll be gone. Dean will be free and he will be Sam's. Forever.

_Forever._

--

They sleep like that, curled together in a tangle of sheets and trailing ends of ropes until the sun melts into the earth. A dusk, Sam rises and slips out the door, leaving Dean to sleep alone. Just for a while.

When he returns, it's fully dark outside. Dean startles awake at the creak-slam of the door as Sam enters. The younger grins, curling his fingers tighter around the styrofoam cup in his hand. It's half full, still warm. Some of the contents sloshed over the lip at some point on the journey home and now dribble ticklishly down over Sam's fingers.

"Coffee?" Dean asks, peering at him expectantly, as if he's surprised that he's still able to feel a desire for the substance.

"Better," Sam responds and crosses the room.

He perches on the bed and keeps the cup out of Dean's line of sight. "Do you trust me?" he asks.

Suspicion rises, heavy and dark, masking Dean's face with a frown. It's a loaded question. Sam only asks it when he knows he's about to do something Dean won't like. But Dean can't say no; can't say no because he's never been able to ever. What Sammy wants, Sammy gets, and Dean _does_ trust him. Just look where that got him.

Swallowing, Dean doesn't reply, maybe he can't. He nods instead, eyes solemn.

"Close your eyes," Sam tells him, and when Dean does, he brings the cup to Dean's lips.

Still warm and thick and red. Sam wants to snatch it back, have it for himself, but he reminds himself of how he'd tasted the girl's blood back in the alley where he'd found her. He grounds himself on the copper-bitter flavor of _life_. This life. It tastes so good. Dean needs to taste it. Sam thinks, perhaps, it's the last push Dean needs.

Once he tastes, he'll be able to let go. He'll forget his fear and regret and surrender. Sam wants Dean to have this.

He tilts the cup, lets a tiny amount slosh up against Dean's lips. His tongue, shy and pink, darts out to taste what he's been offered. In an instant, Dean's eyes flash open and he is staring at him, eyes brilliant green and terrified. _Blood?_ those eyes ask, scream. _You brought me blood?!_ Sam can hear it, in his mind. Maybe he can read thoughts. Maybe he just knows Dean that well.

"Come on, trust me," Sam urges.

Dean cautiously tastes his lips again.

A long moment stretches and yawns around them. Lazy, taking it's time in enjoying the strained, silent stillness that settles over the room. Dean blinks. Sam blinks. Dean breathes. Sam doesn't.

Dean's hand brushes Sam's as he accepts the cup, sliding it out of Sam's fingers and making a show of sipping it slowly.

He tries to hide it, Sam knows, but that's like trying to hide an erection while wearing sweatpants. Sam has just handed Dean pure and utter bliss and he's always been an expressive son of a bitch. His eyes fall closed and Sam watches the line of his throat work as he swallows that first mouthful.

"Ohh," Dean says, after a moment. He looks at Sam, wary. And then, dignity abandoned, Dean drains the cup in record time. His Adam's apple bobs, and his lips are red, red. Sam thinks of the girl, how she tasted, bleeding from the neck. Not enough to kill her, he's not that stupid, but enough that Dean can have a taste.

Cup empty, Dean looks at him as if to say _no more?_ Sam holds his gaze, reminds his face muscles how to smile. With he entire night before them, Sam throws Dean the keys to the Impala, jerking his head towards the door, pleased when Dean snags them from midair without an instant of hesitation.

--

They stumble back in just before dawn. Dean's laughing and Sam kisses away the tinge of red at the corner of his mouth. Dean's a fast learner, turns out, and that's just as good as the rest of it all. Thirst quenched, they are sated in one way and left wanting in another.

The bed welcomes them, bears witness to their lust and tucks it away in a satchel of secrets that slip away, lost to the universe and never to be found or known again. Sam is hungry, hungry and Dean tastes like new beginnings. He wants to taste him everywhere, wants to mark Dean as his own, let his brother do the same to him.

They are so wonderfully wound up in each other and they can never break apart. Not now, not anymore. And it's funny, because it's not Sam that got what he always wanted, it's Dean. Not in the way he'd intended, perhaps, but when it all boils down, Sam will stay. Sam will stay and Dean has always wanted that.

Sam thinks, maybe that's all he's ever wanted too. He tastes Dean again and knows it as truth.

They fuck like the vicious creatures that they have become, violent and sloppy, biting more than kissing, laughing all the while. High on adrenaline, on life, on each other. They are two in a world of many. Secret and furtive. Freaks, like they've always been, and in that sense, nothing changed. Nothing has. Not the things that matter, not between them.

The sun has risen independent from the horizon by the time they collapse, exhausted and raw. They are nothing but skin; bare to each other, still completely hidden from the world. And that is the way it should be.

--

Sam wakes sometime around noon to find Dean on his knees above him, straddling his waist. The ax gleams bright and heavy, held high, ready to swing down like a deadly pendulum. Sam can see his life as a thread, one just seconds from breaking, and it all hangs on Dean.

_Son of a bitch,_ he thinks. He had thought it would be all gone by now, especially considering last night. Bastard is sneakier than he looks. But then, Sam knows that, should have _remembered_ that. He shouldn't have been so careless.

Owlish, Dean stares down at him, face tight. There's a war going on. Sam can see Dean as if he were two instead of one. One half, shrunken so pitifully in the past few days, still clinging to the rungs, even as the other Dean stomps hard on his fingers. Won't, can't let go. The first instinct of every living creature is towards survival. Dean's come back from the brink twice now; knows a thing or two about hanging on.

But then there's the other Dean. That one is growing and growing still - colder all the time. Sam tends to that Dean, helps him bloom and take hold. That half is delicious, is gorgeous, is Sam's yin to his yang. Oh what he can do with Dean, if that half wins out.

"You don't have the balls," he hisses up at Dean. He doesn't struggle to escape, just lies very, very still and doesn't even breathe. He has a knife under his pillow, but it would no longer do any good. It couldn't stab deep enough to leave any significant wound. Words are sharper.

Dean certainly looks like he's been stabbed. A pained look hangs about his eyes. Sam watches him carefully. The weapon in Dean's hands, where his sits now, hesitating at the last possible moment; that part of Dean whispers _do it, save him, kill him_ into the muggy heat of the room. A secret promise that Sam knows nothing about weighing apparent in Dean's ruined expression. Not even that can cement Dean's resolve. A defeated, despondent cry responds at last. _I can't, I can't._

Sam smiles because he knows. Sam is Dean's brother and he can't.

The ax drops, listing off to the side and landing with a useless thud on the carpet beside the bed.

Empty handed, broken, as his soul admits defeat and surrenders to despair, Dean's face crumples. He falls forward, pressing against Sam in a way he had _never_ done as a human, hugging him tight around the middle, sobbing as his life slips away between his fingers and he realizes his doom.

Sam listens to his brother cry away the final shreds of his humanity and pats him awkwardly on the back. _Never again_, he thinks. Dean will never cry like this again, never _hurt_ like this again. After this, there is no going back.

Dean must suffer this utter despair, the deepest, darkest part. This is the price of owning a soul; when you lose it, there's nothing left. It leaves a pit where everything that was ever too hard to think about, too deep to realize or acknowledge even, lest it stop your heart with how much it hurts. Unmasked, the wounds are free to bleed out, maybe. That hurt is the last part to leave. And Dean's well of repressed emotions is deeper than most. Deeper, probably, than Sam will ever know.

Dean cries for a long time. Eventually, the sobs die to hiccuping sniffles that give way to fractured silence. The wounds scab over and heal themselves, fade away into distantly remembered echoes of whispers. And then Dean looks up, wipes his eyes clean, wipes his existence clean. He sheds a burdensome skin that he no longer has use for. Sam watches that shell fall away and from underneath, Dean emerges, sharp and new and grinning.

Sam can't say he's sorry because he's not. 


End file.
